Racism

In Rand's piece on racism, she describes her own views on what qualifies as racist.  She believes that racism is judging people as a racial group, or by their ancestor.  First she explains how she believes that collectivism causes racism.  That when people think of other people in society as a group, it causes racism.  She then goes on to explain how the implementation of capitalism has been a step in the right direction.  Capitalism views everyone as an individual and Rand believes that that is the only way that to help the issue of racism.  She states that the problem of racism is "currently" getting worse.  Because there were some "Negroes"in leadership positions, that they were making the problem of racism worse by implementing the idea of quotas.  She said that they are giving special powers to certain racial groups, which only makes racism worse because it doesn't treat people like individuals, but as a group based on the race. Finally, she says that passing the civil rights bill would be the greatest evil of all because it would take away the rights of the individual.

This piece was interesting because I have never heard this extreme view on racism before.  Rand did have some good points about how people should not be judged for what their ancestors have done as a group, but I think she takes it too far maybe? I don't think it qualifies as racism for someone to be proud and boast about their ancestors.  I agree with Rand however on her view on quotas.  I have always thought that quotas seemed wrong and that they do not help racism.  Quotas do not view people as individuals, but separate them out according to their race.  At the beginning of her piece, I thought that she did support her arguments, but at the end it seemed that she didn't support her ideas enough.  Overall, her piece was well written and definitely invoked emotion, but was very extreme.